Until the end of January Emily O’Brien, a first-term lawmaker from District 42 in Grand Forks, worked at the University of North Dakota’s Center for Innovation. She left the gig, she says, because of unprofessional conduct from her superiors including political hostility from Provost Thomas DiLorenzo: Before she was elected to the North Dakota House…

North Dakota Democrats got some tough polling news earlier this week. According to numbers from Mason-Dixon, a well respected national polling organization, they’re currently behind in every single statewide race. Including the hotly contested U.S. Senate race where incumbent Democrat Heidi Heitkamp trails Congressman Kevin Cramer by four points. Today party chairwoman Kylie Oversen, who…

To hear our friends on the left side of North Dakota politics tell it, back during the 2015 legislative session the Republican majority (with help from a couple of Democratic votes) passed tax cuts for “big oil.” According to them, these tax cuts have contributed to the state’s budget situation. “We’ve been cutting our revenue…

I have been consistently critical of Senator Heidi Heitkamp for collecting well over 90 percent of her itemized, individual contributions from out of state. I mean, the Senator reported in her year-end report to the FEC for 2017 that she received three times more contributions from New Yorkers than she did from North Dakotans. According…

Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger was on air with me today to discuss the Supreme Court fight over applying state taxes to online sales (I wrote about it earlier today), and to correct an unfortunate misrepresentation of his position perpetrated by his Democratic challenger Kylie Oversen, and he revealed something pretty interesting. If you buy something…

Yesterday Kylie Oversen, the North Dakota Democratic Party’s candidate for Tax Commissioner, posted a press release urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Quill vs. North Dakota precedent which limits states to applying the sales tax only to entities with a physical presence within their borders. Quill was actually litigated by then-Tax Commissioner Heidi…

According to a Democratic insider with knowledge of the discussions, there’s a movement afoot to replace party chairwoman Kylie Oversen with someone else. Oversen presided over what was a disastrous 2016 election cycle for the Democrats, yet maintains her leadership post in the 2018 cycle despite deciding to also launch a campaign for Tax Commissioner…

I had to laugh a bit when I saw this headline over my colleague John Hageman’s piece about the impact of federal tax reform on state-level revenues. “ND tax office expects revenue hit from new tax law, but top legislators don’t plan on changes,” is the headline, and while it’s certainly true the Republican-backed tax…

I had an interesting conversation last night with a Democratic insider – a former candidate for statewide office, as it happens – who is involved in party activities this election cycle. My friend, who asked not to be named, is not optimistic about the party’s state convention this weekend, or its chances to make meaningful…

Democrats have been trying to make an issue out of Republican oil tax reforms passed during the 2015 legislative session. To hear them tell it, the reforms were a give away to the oil industry. Something which has contributed to the state’s budget headaches of the current biennium (despite the fact that the reforms resulted…